There are a few surprises there. I thought The Painted Man would have finished slightly higher (in fact, I'm still surprised that it didn't made the final shortlist). It's good to see Adrian Tchaikovsky'sEmpire in Black and Gold putting in a strong showing (that finished higher than I expected). Graceling by Kristin Cashore did really well for a debut novel that didn't seem to generate that much online buzz. The main absentee is Paul Kearney's The Ten Thousand - I wasn't the only blogger to think that this would have been a very suitable winner, and its absence from the above list is a little disappointing, not to mention surprising as it sold pretty well on both sides of the Atlantic. Then again, since most of the votes came from outside the UK and the US, maybe it's not that much of a surprise after all.

4 comments:

GRACELING didn't generate a lot of online discussion, but that may be because a lot of the 'usual suspects' online are a bit disdainful of YA novels. I remember Pat read it 'by accident' and seemed to think it was an infectious disease when he found out he'd been reading a YA book ;-)

I suspect the book did very well in other areas, and I know it sold very impressively in the UK by itself on release.

The absence of the Kearney is regretabble, but he can aim for it again next time :-)

GRACELING didn't generate much online buzz? Really? I've come across scads of GRACELING-centric discussion. Most of that was on non-genre blogs, though; I don't think I've seen much about it on any of the sffh blogs I read.

@ Adam - unless there's a change in the voting format I can't see someone like Kearney ever winning the award, as he just doesn't have the sales figures of some of the other contenders. He's a far better writer than, say, Brent Weeks, but Weeks has better sales figures and ultimately with the current set-up this will make a difference. A shame, but there we go.

@ Memory - I didn't see much discussion, but then again I only visit two different forums. It may well have been discussed plenty elsewhere. I might check the book out, actually.

so far Graceling has not been that interesting and I have been thinking of abandoning it because but before I did I just wanted to know if it gets better later on and if it is worth reading the whole book.

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Speculative Horizons is a UK-based blog dedicated to discovering the best in speculative fiction. Here you'll find book reviews, author interviews, artwork for upcoming releases, and commentary on all aspects of the genre.

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A child of the eighties, I was raised on a steady diet of Ghostbusters, Thundercats and Transformers. I eventually discovered fantasy books via the awesome Fighting Fantasy series, and my love of fantasy led me to create Speculative Horizons, a popular book review blog I ran for three years. In 2010 I joined Orbit to work as an editorial assistant.